With the widespread usage of the smart user equipment (UE) (e.g., the mobile phone), applications on the UE are increasingly richer. Application services, such as microblog and social network instant messaging (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, QQ and MSN) are more and more popular in the users.
With regard to application services such as Twitter, Facebook, QQ and MSN, users corresponding to the UEs are usually managed on a group basis in corresponding Application Server (AS) according to the users' requirement. For example, the same message is usually required to be sent to all users in one group. However, the UEs in the same group in the AS will not be uniformly managed at the network side. For example, with regard to services such as QQ and MSN, a message is usually sent to each UE in the group through the Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN) and the Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) in the Core Network (CN), and the Radio Network Controller (RNC) and the NodeB (NB) in the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN), respectively. With regard to services such as Twitter and Facebook, corresponding AS adopts the instant pushing mode, i.e., generally pushing a message to each UE in the group through the GGSN and the SGSN in the CN, and the RNC and the NB in the UTRAN, respectively.
During the implementation of the present invention, the inventor finds that the prior art at least has the following problem: in the prior art, when the AS sends a message to the UEs in the same group, the message needs to be sent to each UE in the group through the CN and the UTRAN; thus in the prior art, the AS is low efficient in sending a message to each UE in the same group.